Ok... I give up. HELP!!

[darrenb]

Well, I managed to get permission to hunt an old home site today, and had nothing but bad luck. The house was built in 1820, and was standing until the property was purchased and used as a cow pasture in the early 1970's. I went out, all excited, and hoping to find my first IH penny. Just as soon as I got on the property, my BH QD2 started singing, indicating a dime at 4". Repeated in all directions, and not fluctuating. I dug only to find what looks to have been a vienna wiener can. I covered the hole and put the can on top, and moved on. Long story short, my detector read either dimes or quarters on lots of cans. All were the aluminum looking cans, but the short 2" tall by about 2" diameter. I was getting the same readings on badly rusted pieces of roof tin that was in the area as well. I came home, laid coins out on the ground, and ran the coil over them. The detector reads correctly on these. My last detector adventure landed lots of clad, and seemed to be pretty accurate about the coin and the depth. Is there any chance that the ground is badly mineralized and causing the detector to be confused? I tried hunting the quickdraw II in all metal, disc, and auto disc. I had the sensitivity set at about 3 o'clock, with the disc at about 10 o'clock. This was with the initial setting. I tried everything I could think of, even turning the sensitivity down as low as possible, and disc turned to 100%. Nothing worked. Is this just one of those things I have to learn to live with? Do I need to go out and get a better unit? At this point, I'm having enough fun that I don't mind sinking a little money in a higher end detector, but if it isn't necessary, I'd prefer to just keep using this one. So, what do you veteran hunters suggest?
Thanks in advance.
Darren

 

[mwaynebennett]

What is the year and mint mark of the vienna wiener can? They are worth lots of money in Bizzaro land. Maybe you entered into some space-time warp and were in some other dimension and only junk (by earth standards) showed up and our "good stuff" was discriminated-out.

Seriously, were there any electric power lines close by? Were your batteries all full of power?


Mark
Elite 2200
WA St.

 

[darrenb]

I did think about that time/space continum thing! I looked for power lines, and none within 50 yards. I did switch to new batteries just to be on the safe side, with the same results. Wonder if I could sell the wiener cans to the aliens?

 

[salmonriverhotrock]

With all the good things that came with aluminum, in the metal detecting world, it has many times been a curse. Monday evening, I quickly checked a very small dirt turn out along the river side of the highway to see what I could find. It did not take long and I found one quarter and three pennies. Then came the aluminum pieces. Most pieces were about 1/16" thick and 3/4" wide and broken into about 1-1 1/2" or give or take lengths. They were all over in about a 10' area. The sun was going down quickly behind the mountain so it came down to two things, spend the time to search and clean out all the junk or leave the junk and search more of where it was not before dark fell on me. In that 10' area, it is possible that there may be a coin or two but I have no reason to believe they would be old because the highway is not that old.

I've detected around places just like you have described and they are usually trashed to the max due to all the purposes they served or were used for. Farm out buildings in many places were never kept neat and tidy either. Your machine is most likely just fine but you may have to decide to dig, remove, and carry away the junk to clear the area enough to hunt it more thoroughly. I guess it may come down to how bad you want to gamble on finding an Indian Head (or any other coins) in a place that possibly has a potential for producing them. Could be you are the first who has set a coil down on that ground.

What I have found in old mining camps, around shacks and cabins of Idaho, many of the real old rusted and or deteriorated cans I have dug were solder sealed at the seams and this solder must have some small amounts of silver in it because they hit pretty strong or as valuable under discrimination settings. Even when crushed, I open them enough to check for coins.

I'm not sure how long your permission goes to hunt this place but it may be worth the work to clean it out a bit. Think of how long it takes an Archaeologist to excavate sites and how patient they must be to do it, junk and all.

 

[darrenb]

Robert, sounds like good advice. I should be getting my 4" coil in soon, and I will give that a try. As far as permission goes, the guy told me to have at it for as long as I want to do it. There are around 400 acres that he gave me access to, and it seems that there were quite a few other structures on the farm. I guess I'm just going to do a lot of digging... that indian head penny is out there waiting for me somewhere! Has anybody used a time ranger or land ranger? I came home and jumped the gun (so to speak) and sold one of my guns from my collection, and now I have to buy another detector. Now I just have to decide which one to buy. No, I probably don't need it, but I'm having a lot more fun beeping than I ever did shooting, and in the long run, it is a whole lot cheaper!!

 

[themartaman]

Keep digging. Been doing it for forty years. If you decide to buy another machine look at the Teknetics Omega 8000. I have a landstar, minelab sovereign elite and a tek mark I. The mark I is probably the best coin machine ever. Too heavy. The omega has made detecting fun again plus it is new technology.

 

[tab-nabit]

Trashy areas are where the smaller coils come in. If your hitting/digging cans, try and size up the target. Cans are usually larger than coins. I also depend on audio (with headphones) before taking any screen display into account.
Hit the target at different angles. Lift the coil and re-sweep. You can also size up a target in pinpoint, and again, try different coil heights (lifting & re-sweeping). See if any of this helps.